


Aloe Vera

by cuetlaxcoyotl



Category: Mad Max: Fury Road, モブサイコ100 | Mob Psycho 100
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Jim Goose cameo, Post-Reigen's spin-off, Pre-Mad Max: Fury Road, WIP, but everything is just implied and off-camera, is this crack? probably, the fact that it is a Mad Max fic is its own warning, unrealistic desert survival skills
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-03-08 21:48:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18903310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuetlaxcoyotl/pseuds/cuetlaxcoyotl
Summary: In the end, it isn’t ESPers (particularly) what destroys the world; people with no psychic powers can doom everyone on their own.In a completely unrelated event, one Wednesday Reigen and Mob accidentally time travel to the not so distant future.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello friends, I wrote this by accident while trying to write [entirely another thing](https://witchreflection.tumblr.com/post/184657569895/witchreflection-a-fic-idea-i-will-not-write), so it is incomplete and will probably stay like that for a long, long while, but I crave attention, so, my apologies

While being stranded in a desert, alongside his fifteen years old, without the appropriate equipment, is already a worst-case scenario, it only takes Arataka a glimpse of the settlement (maybe camp?) to realise it is about to get terribly, horribly worse. The precarious improvised buildings, the modified cars, the heavily armed people, the hungry hopeless looks of those who aren’t armed, it all points to something bad, what, exactly, he can’t tell yet, but his main guess is that they stumbled into a war zone. 

And while he doubts they can get help in such a place, they already consumed most of the water they had (which was actually the barley tea for clients, Mob’s milk, Tome’s lichi ramune and Serizawa’s iced coffee, and not really water), Mob and Arataka are severely sunburned, and once the sun sets the temperature will begin to drop. 

With a sigh he tells Mob to reinforce his barrier and to keep close, then they walk into the settlement. 

*** 

They do not get help and there is no water to be spared, but they get the weapons to change hands and the people stop looking quite that hopeless. 

Arataka doesn’t know what, exactly, will happen to the men formerly in charge of the camp now that they are at the mercy of the people they were abusing, but he imagines it is nothing good (not that they will not deserve it) and he doesn’t want to be there when it happens. 

But before they go, they talk (faltering and in English) with the old lady who appears to be elected the new leader of the camp. Through her they barter Arataka’s cellphone (they have no signal anyways and they still have Mob’s), all three packages of Tome’s melted strawberry pocky (they still have a bag of shrimp flavoured potato chips, rice crackers and assorted umaibo) and Arataka’s dress shoes, for more or less fitting sturdier boots (Mob’s trainers are leather, brand new and thick soled, so they should do) (the boots where probably taken from the men previously in charge and Arataka will not think too hard on that one), a tarp, a sheet of clear plastic, a canvas backpack thing and a pair of scarves to cover their heads with (and a handgun, given silently to Arataka along a fistful of ammunition, and then tucked discreetly in the back of his trousers, after making sure it wasn’t chambered and the safety was on). 

(And if we are being honest here, they probably got that much, not thanks to Arataka’s superb negotiation skills, but to gratitude and sheer relief that they were leaving and not demanding more. Something he is not taking personally, considering the situation before their arrival and the demographics of the camp.) 

And most importantly, from the old lady they get information. From her assumption that they came from Sydney (dressed like that, not knowing anything), Arataka learns they are somewhere in Australia (a fact confirmed at night when Mob identifies some southern constellations Tome explained to him once). From her talk about a “before”, the wonder over a working cellphone and her confusion about a government or authority, Arataka forms some hypothesis and learns that they will not be getting help soon and that they should avoid most permanent settlements, mountain passes and people carrying about a flaming skull symbol. More straightforwardly, Arataka learns that, no, there are no reliable sources of water, radiation is such a constant danger that it went full circle and people doesn’t concern themselves too much about it and that they should keep an eye out for sandstorms. 

*** 

They survive. 

Arataka has his foldable multi-tool and the know-how to make a moisture trap, light a fire and catch small game. 

Mob is a bit heartbroken the first time they have to kill and eat a lizard, but does not complain, not even once, not about the fact that they don’t have a destination, the sun, the cold, the sand, the lack of water, and it keeps Arataka from just giving up. 

*** 

They encounter ghosts. Many. 

The ghosts are usually mean, confused, hazy. Some are strong enough spirits for Arataka to perceive or affect the physical world, but most only Mob can see. Mob always exorcises them. Arataka thinks it is kinder than to let them wander the desert forever, Mob agrees. 

They also find a couple friendly, helpful, ones. One guides them to the crash that killed her, upside down, half buried and pretty much invisible where a sandstorm threw it. The car itself may still be able to run and Mob’s powers could fix the crumpled cabin, but the gas has long since spoiled. Even then, it provides them with invaluable gear, materials, things to barter with, and it will serve as a shelter. 

Once it’s cool enough, Arataka takes their new (old) shovel and buries the two bodies they found in the car. The ghost vanishes peacefully afterwards on her own. 

They don’t stay for long in the car, as there is no food around, and eventually they find another ghost that shows them a muddy patch that used to be once the source of a small stream. They stay there for a longer time, but the ghost advises them to leave, as the place is inside Rock Rider territory. They go, taking with them as much water they could collect with their trusty clear plastic sheet. Mob offered the ghost to exorcise him, but he refused on the hope that in the future he might be able to guide another person to the water. 

Eventually, they come across the ghost of a blonde policeman. 

*** 

Arataka follows after Mob carefully, just like Mob follows carefully after the ghost. They are traversing through what Arataka assumes used to be an opal mining site, with the added danger that someone, at some point, disguised the mineshafts, crating an unpredictable array of pitfall traps. 

Mob stops walking, nodding mindfully from time to time and then thanks the empty air where Reigen assumes the ghost is, promising they’ll take care of it now. They are standing next to a recently disturbed trap. 

Arataka approaches the edge cautiously, even though Mob would stop his fall if he where to slip. At the bottom, looking up at them, there is a man. 

Unsurprisingly, the man points a gun at them. 

*** 

There are voices overhead, not close enough to understand what they are saying. If they are the ones to set the trap or not, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter one voice is terribly familiar; they all get mixed in, scrambled around, and he doesn’t never quite remember to whom they belong to, and most of the time he prefers it this way. The odds point to someone with a grudge with him, anyways, so the wanderer sets himself and readies his gun. 

At the edge of the trap stands a man and a boy. At first he doesn’t know what it is about them that makes him uneasy, as he doesn’t make an habit to be around people, but then starts to notice the small details, the man has a matching suit, for one. Sure it has seen better days, as has everything in the world, but the wanderer can’t recall anyone with a suit in such good condition in, let’s say, some 7000 days. 

And they look hungry, as everyone else does, but the boy looks as if he had been well feed until recently, his shoes are not only matching, but runners, white leather underneath the red sand. 

But overall, they look-- at ease; careful, cautious, but not really concerned. Had he seen them 4000, 3000 days ago, he may had still called it naivety, nowadays it rings like well deserved confidence, and that is dangerous. 

They briefly talk to each other in some language the wanderer doesn’t recognise, another oddity. After a moment, the man crouches down at the edge of the mineshaft and finally addresses him. 

“Sir, my student here—”, the man makes a broad gesture to indicate the boy and almost loses his equilibrium in process, before regaining his footing with more exaggerated flailing “—can help you get out of there, but first we need to know if you are injured.” 

The wanderer does not lower the gun, untrusting by necessity and experience. The offer seems honest, the question reasonable, but if they are the ones who set the trap, they may be searching for a way to subdue him, and there is the unseen owner of the third voice, besides. 

Even if they didn’t set the trap themselves, they may still want some kind of compensation for their help. 

Still, the wanderer has been down there already for a day and a night, trapped by the crumbling walls of the mineshaft and the wrecked brace on his bum leg. He left the Interceptor carefully hidden far away enough; he can’t trust that no-one would stumble upon her if he leaves her alone for too long, but he would have to keep these people from following him to her. 

It’s not like he has much of a choice. He shakes his head no, and he took his time answering but the man seems to get it and turns to the boy. The mans says something in that unknown language again and the boy nods; the wanderer tenses and shifts of his gun, so he is pointing squarely at the man instead of pointing their general direction. 

The boy frowns and reaches towards the man, as if to pull him away, but the man just rises his hands and starts waving them around as he talks, “no, no, it’s ok, I was just telling Mob to be careful, yeah. He is going to take you out now, it’s going to be startling, so don’t shoot us by accident”. 

Before the wanderer has a chance to process that, he is floating in the air. 

By reflex, he shoots. 

The bullet stops before hitting the man in the chest and just stays there, still rotating slightly. 

The man falls on his ass, shallowing. 

The wanderer is unceremoniously dropped to the ground on his back, from about two meters in the air, as the gun is yanked from his hand, and it floats away, disassembling itself in the air, until it falls in the boys cupped hands. 

That lack of concern? He now knew why. 

“That went well,” says the man as he picks himself from the ground, dusting his trousers. The look the boys gives the man expresses perfectly the wanderer’s feelings about the whole situation. 

*** 

So Arataka may have almost being shoot again, but they now got a drive and someone who knows his way around this desert. 

The man they rescued from the mineshaft has not said a word in the whole time they’d been together, communicating only in grunts, shrugs and gestures. By his skittishness and the length of his beard, Arataka has the feeling that the man has not been around people in a while, which considering the people Arakata and Mob have meet, its understandable. 

The other thing is that, according to Mob, the man is not only has some degree of ESP, but he is also literally haunted by several ghosts of varying levels of meanness, and apparently believed he was just hallucinating them until Mob confirmed he could see them too. 

The man doesn’t give them his name. The ghosts know it, but Mob says it feels rude to use it, so Arataka decides to call him Ronin-san, because it sounds cool. 

*** 

After some time traveling together, Ronin-san still maintains that air of skittishness and almost feral quality, but begins speaking a bit. Monosyllabics, incomplete sentences and a lot of mumbling, mostly in response to things Arataka says, but also to gently teach Mob this or that. Fixing an engine, navigating by the stars. Arataka may not like it, but he didn’t stop Ronin-san from teaching Mob to load a gun, mostly because Ronin-san had good gun safety habits and Arakata doesn’t have the stomach to be the one to hand a weapon to Mob. 

Ronin-san is also the one to confirm Arataka’s time travel hypothesis while also proving to be much older than Arataka first believed (after Ronin-san cut his hair and beard; Mob thinks that this apparent youthfulness is a side-effect of Ronin-san’s brand of ESP) and ruining Arataka’s faith in humanity in the process, because it’s been, like, at most 50 years since he and Mob went to the convenience store and stepped on a wormhole on the way back to the office, and society already collapsed this much. 

Arataka is blaming it on those zombie apocalypse movies giving people weird ideas of what survival is supposed be like. 

*** 

They get attacked one day as they rest at the edge of what Ronin-san calls the Powder Lakes. They try to avoid any confrontation at all, but once they are spotted, they are chased by what Arataka now understands to be a hunting party, one with the feared flaming skull displayed proudly on every vehicle. 

In the end they are outnumbered, outgunned and outrun, but it still feels a little bit unfair when Mob subdues the skull people. 

At that point they could run away, but Arataka stops to talk, in part because talk is what he does the best, and in part because these skull people are just so painfully young. Scarred and hungry, under that white paint and feverish viciousness, those boys are just that, boys. A good part of them about Mob’s age, the oldest may be 20 if Arataka is feeling generous. 

It helps a lot that they are a bunch of fanatic followers of some death cult, because they don’t waste time in gladly and zealously telling Arataka about what he is setting against, so he doesn’t really need to ask them anything. And it also helps that they are, well, boys and easily impressed by flashy displays of cool psychic powers. 

It is, in the end, a bit like talking with Claw members, except now Arataka is more conscious about the very real danger of the situation and he is not dealing with adults that should know better. He doesn’t get to convince them to renounce their Inmortan and Vahalla, but now they are listening to him because Mob listens to him and Mob is Very Strong, and they are now chattering to him, because they are teenagers and like to be heard and the attention. 

Ronin-san is terribly uncomfortable with the situation and the curiosity directed to him, but Mob has desensitised him to having a rapt audience, so he just grunts and ignores questions, and steps aside to maintain his personal space, instead of shooting at them and bolting into the desert when they poke curiously at him. 

At some point, a particularly responsible voice among the pack reminds the rest that they should return to the Citadel, this prompts a round of complaining and then some inspired soul suggests that Arataka, Mob and Ronin-san should go with them to meet the Inmortan, a proposal meet with excitement and enthusiasm and general approval. 

Ronin-san is even more uncomfortable with this development and Arataka would have understood if he decided to get away while he could, but apparently being near another person who can also see his ghosts (and act as a buffer to them) wins in the end, and so Ronin-san just sighs and sticks closer to Mob. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> About the timeline:  
> In an attempt to make the original trilogy and Fury Road (FR) co-exist within a same timeline, using canon day counts and the 15 years gap between Road Warrior (RW) and Beyond Thunderdome (BT), I made Max some 10 years older than the re-boot makes him be and 10 years younger than the original timeline proposes, so he is in his mid-forties.
> 
> Now, we know that the Citadel has a day count of about 32 years) as told by Max’s blood bag tattoo) and Furiosa was stolen 19 years ago. Max was 23 in the first movie (MM), 26 in RW and 41 in BT, I chose FR to happen 4 years after because reasons, so he is 45. This means that Furiosa was stolen around the time RW happened, and I calculate she was between 15 and 20. 
> 
> If we suppose that the citadel day count starts from the day they settled, it can be before complete societal collapse (canonicaly it happens around RW) and the apocalypse (aka the desertification and receding of the ocean) doesn’t have to happen at once (and the comics completely ruin my timeline, so I’m cherry picking them). Hand-waving it, there was people at the Citadel before Joe arrived, so the count belongs to these people and Joe adopted it so it appears he has been in power for longer, Furiosa was kidnaped around the time they conquered the Citadel.
> 
> I’m proposing that the Oil wars were really long and ended a bit after MM, because there was no countries left to fight. The war started, officially, when Max was around 10, so he remembers Before, as society and infrastructure collapsed around him; people settled at the Citadel 2 years into the war, when Max was 12. The Vuvalini, being smart women, settled in the Green Place (it used to be a farm) in the first year of the war (they saw the conflict brewing for years and where a bunch of solar-punk preppers trapped in a diesel-punk scenario), either Furiosa was born as the war started or a few years before.
> 
> (Yes, the summary is a 45 years from next Wednesday reference. Yes, it was my intention to make Max be 45. Yes, Reigen miscalculated how much they time-travelled by 5 years. It is because I’m extra like that.)
> 
> The Old Lady thinking they are from Sydney thing contradicts the fact that apparently in BT is stated people flighted from Sydney early in the apocalypse, let’s just pretend that there is always a rumour in the wastes that the military has everything under control in Sydney.


	2. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a subtle and particular kind of ESP

Many, many years ago, back when the wanderer was still a small kid and the world had not ended yet, and this is something he does not remember now, he tripped down some steps and fell, badly, on his right wrist. It hurt. A lot. But other than a whole lot of swelling, nothing seemed out of place and he could move his fingers alright. His parents took him to the doctor anyways, just to make sure. The doctor said it was nothing serious and prescribed him just a mild anti-inflammatory.

Had the doctor taken an x-ray just after the fall, he could have seen a fracture, nothing fragmented or displaced or anything that would need surgery, mind you, but a very definite crack.

A couple years after that, when there was still enough water to drown… he did exactly that. His cousin dragged him out of the pool as fast as possible, but the kid who was the wanderer was not breathing anymore. Another older cousin gave him CPR.

Do you know how in action movies when someone drowns, they spit water and are up, running about just after some minutes, with no complications like pneumonia or brain damage? The kid that grew up to be the wanderer did exactly that.

Only, people in action movies just recuperates from drowning super fast to accommodate the narrative momentum and that’s not how it works in real life.

These are some effects of a very subtle and particular kind of ESP.

One other effect would not manifest until the kid as a bit older, around Mob’s age, some years into the wars.

It happened when his grandfather died with the kid and all his family in the room and, instead of just going wherever people goes when they die, the kid’s grandfather remained as a ghost.

The kid had seen ghosts before and knew that no-one but him could see them –even if his oldest cousins sometimes said they could to scare the youngest ones – so he didn’t say anything, not even to his grandfather himself. Not that it could made any difference; all his grandfather ever did was haunt his own house and keep company to the kid’s grandmother, until she died too just a year afterwards and they both finally left. Or that’s what the kid believed, because he never saw them again.

From this event there is an important fact that the kid did not notice until later, and it is that people who died in his proximity, more often than not, ended up remaining as ghosts.

Other thing that he eventually noticed, was that if ghosts knew his name, they could, and more often than not, would haunt him, and the wanderer wasn’t –not back then nor now – the kind of ESPer that could exorcise ghosts or spirits.  

The mechanics of this all would end up mostly forgotten and all scrambled up in his head after years of wandering the wastes and a whole lot of would-have-been-lethal-to-other-people head injuries, and he was already terminally crazy, so it was not that far fetched that he was just hallucinating.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote the next chapter but i don't like it, but i wanted to explain (kinda) esper!Max. He does have a healing factor, but he is no Wolverine, so he heals faster, ages slower and his immune system is super strong, but for example, the knee injury from the first movie healed wrong, several times. 
> 
> What his powers do is kind of try to keep him alive, it somehow translates to making the recently deceased susceptible to being tied to the material plane, and his blood actually has healing properties. 
> 
> Jim Goose became a ghost all on his own, Jessie and the Sprog fortunately did not.
> 
> "Terminal crazy" is a canonical thing Max says about himself in reference to his work as an officer. "[...] any longer out on that road and I'm one of them, ya know? A terminal crazy, except I've got a bronze badge that says I'm one of the good guys."
> 
> I also expected to be yelled at for my inaccurate Mad Max's lore knowledge (i never saw Beyond Thunderdome, oops), but instead i was yelled at for being too edgy for the MP100 fandom (i ended up deleting the comment and my terribly facetious answer because 1) that day i was in the mood to pick up a fight 2) the commentator was not a registered user so they probably never saw my response in the first place and i never got my fight)


End file.
